Virtual Ergonomic Assessment of First Saudi Arabian Designed Car in a Semi-Immersive Environment

During the last decade human factors is drawing more attention in the design, engineering, production, and maintenance of new industrial products especially in automotive industry. Ergonomic quality is becoming a critical criterion for the success of many products. Recently, virtual reality (VR) technique is widely applied during different phases of product development. The use of VR allows designer reducing the production of physical prototypes that are very expensive and requires long production time. Virtual humans are used in the automotive industry especially for ergonomic analysis of a virtual prototype of a car. In this research work, an ergonomic assessment for first Saudi Arabian Car known has been performed. CATIA V5 human builder module was used to develop the virtual humans of American male 50 and 95 percentile, which were utilized to carry out the ergonomic analysis of driver's seat. The main goal of the research is to develop a virtual environment (VE) that allow designers and engineer to evaluate the car interiors and driver's seat position using the digital mock-up instead of building the physical prototype, having a virtual validation of the project, in its early development phases. A successful ergonomics assessment has been performed on the digital model of the car in a semi-immersive virtual environment and recommendations were made for the driver's seat position based on the assessment.